- <title>Free Timetabling Software - nice free software</title>
- <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Free_Timetabling_Software___nice_free_software.html</link>
- <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Free_Timetabling_Software___nice_free_software.html</guid>
- <pubDate>Sat, 7 Jul 2012 09:50:00 +0200</pubDate>
- <description><p>Included in <ahref="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu</a> is a
-large collection of end user and school specific software. One of the
-packages not installed by default but provided in the Debian archive
-for schools to install if they want to, is a system to automatically
-plan the school time table using information about available teachers,
-classes and rooms, combined with the list of required courses and how
-many hours each topic should receive. The software is
-<a href="http://lalescu.ro/liviu/fet/">named FET</a>, and it provide a
-graphical user interface to input the required information, save the
-result in a fairly simple XML format, and generate time tables for
-both teachers and students. It is available both for
-<a href="http://lalescu.ro/liviu/fet/download.html">Linux, MacOSX and
-Windows</a>.</p>
-
-<p>This is <a href="http://lalescu.ro/liviu/fet/features.html">the
-feature list</a>, liftet from the project web site:</p>
-
-<p><ul>
- <li><p>FET is free software, licensed under the GNU GPL v2 or later.
- You can freely use, copy, modify and redistribute it</p>
- </li>
-
- <li><p>Localized to en_US (US English, default), ar (Arabic), ca (Catalan), da (Danish),
- de (German), el (Greek), es (Spanish), fa (Persian), fr (French), gl (Galician), he (Hebrew),
- hu (Hungarian), id (Indonesian), it (Italian), lt (Lithuanian),
- mk (Macedonian), ms (Malay), nl (Dutch), pl (Polish), pt_BR (Brazilian Portuguese), ro (Romanian),
- ru (Russian), si (Sinhala), sk (Slovak), sr (Serbian), tr (Turkish), uk (Ukrainian), uz (Uzbek)
- and vi (Vietnamese) (incompletely for some languages)</p>
- </li>
-
- <li><p>Fully automatic generation
- algorithm, allowing also semi-automatic or manual allocation</p>
- </li>
-
- <li><p>Platform independent
- implementation, allowing running on GNU/Linux, Windows, Mac and any
- system that Qt supports</p>
- </li>
-
- <li><p>Flexible modular
- XML format for the input file, allowing editing with an XML editor
- or by hand (besides FET interface)</p>
- </li>
-
- <li><p>Import/export from CSV format</p>
- </li>
-
- <li><p>The resulted timetables
- are exported into HTML, XML and CSV formats</p>
- </li>
-
- <li><p>Flexible students
- structure, organized into sets: years, groups and subgroups. FET allows
- overlapping years and groups and non-overlapping subgroups. You can even
- define individual students (as separate sets)</p>
- </li>
-
- <li><p>Each constraint has a weight percentage, from 0.0% to 100.0%
- (but some special constraints are allowed to have only 100% weight percentage)</p>
- </li>
-
- <li><p>Limits for the algorithm (all these limits can be increased on demand,
- as a custom version, because this would require a bit more memory):</p>
-
- <ul>
- <li><p>Maximum total number of hours (periods) per day: 60</p></li>
-
- <li><p>Maximum number of working days per week: 35</p></li>
-
- <li><p>Maximum total number of teachers: 6000</p></li>
-
- <li><p>Maximum total number of sets of students: 30000</p></li>
-
- <li><p>Maximum total number of subjects: 6000</p></li>
-
- <li><p>Virtually unlimited number of activity tags</p></li>
-
- <li><p>Maximum number of activities: 30000</p></li>
-
- <li><p>Maximum number of rooms: 6000</p></li>
-
- <li><p>Maximum number of buildings: 6000</p></li>
-
- <li><p>Possibility of adding multiple teachers and students sets for each activity.
- (it is possible also to have no teachers or no students sets for an activity)</p></li>
-
- <li><p>Virtually unlimited number of time constraints</p></li>
-
- <li><p>Virtually unlimited number of space constraints</p></li>
- </ul>
-
- </li>
-
- <li><p>A large and flexible
- palette of time constraints:</p>
- <ul>
-
- <li><p>Break periods</p>
- </li>
-
- <li><p>For teacher(s):</p>
- <ul>
- <li><p>
- Not available periods
- </p></li>
- <li><p>
- Max/min days per week
- </p></li>
- <li><p>
- Max gaps per day/week
- </p></li>
- <li><p>
- Max hours daily/continuously
- </p></li>
- <li><p>
- Min hours daily
- </p></li>
- <li><p>
- Max hours daily/continuously with an activity tag
- </p></li>
- <li><p>
- Respect working in an hourly interval a max number of days per week
- </p></li>
- </ul>
- </li>
-
- <li><p>For students (sets):</p>
- <ul>
- <li><p>
- Not available periods
- </p></li>
- <li><p>
- Begins early (specify max allowed beginnings at second hour)
- </p></li>
- <li><p>
- Max gaps per day/week
- </p></li>
- <li><p>
- Max hours daily/continuously
- </p></li>
- <li><p>
- Min hours daily
- </p></li>
- <li><p>
- Max hours daily/continuously with an activity tag
- </p></li>
- <li><p>
- Respect working in an hourly interval a max number of days per week
- </p></li>
- </ul>
- </li>
-
- <li><p>For an activity or a set of activities/subactivities:</p>
- <ul>
- <li><p>
- A single preferred starting time
- </p></li>
- <li><p>
- A set of preferred starting times
- </p></li>
- <li><p>
- A set of preferred time slots
- </p></li>
- <li><p>
- Min/max days between them
- </p></li>
- <li><p>
- End(s) students day
- </p></li>
- <li><p>
- Same starting time/day/hour
- </p></li>
- <li><p>
- Occupy max time slots from selection
- (a complex and flexible constraint, useful in many situations)
- </p></li>
- <li><p>
- Consecutive, ordered, grouped (for 2 or 3 (sub)activities)
- </p></li>
- <li><p>
- Not overlapping
- </p></li>
- <li><p>
- Max simultaneous in selected time slots
- </p></li>
- <li><p>
- Min gaps between a set of (sub)activities
- </p></li>
- </ul>
- </li>
- </ul>
-
- </li>
-
- <li><p>A large and flexible
- palette of space constraints:</p>
- <ul>
-
- <li><p>Room not available periods</p>
- </li>
-
- <li><p>For teacher(s):</p>
- <ul>
- <li><p>
- Home room(s)
- </p></li>
- <li><p>
- Max building changes per day/week
- </p></li>
- <li><p>
- Min gaps between building changes
- </p></li>
- </ul>
- </li>
-
- <li><p>For students (sets):</p>
- <ul>
- <li><p>
- Home room(s)
- </p></li>
- <li><p>
- Max building changes per day/week
- </p></li>
- <li><p>
- Min gaps between building changes
- </p></li>
- </ul>
- </li>
-
- <li><p>Preferred room(s):</p>
- <ul>
- <li><p>
- For a subject
- </p></li>
- <li><p>
- For an activity tag
- </p></li>
- <li><p>
- For a subject and an activity tag
- </p></li>
- <li><p>
- Individually for a (sub)activity
- </p></li>
- </ul>
- </li>
-
- <li><p>For a set of activities:</p>
- <ul>
- <li><p>
- Occupy a maximum number of different rooms
- </p></li>
- </ul>
- </li>
-
- </ul>
-
- </li>
-</ul></p>
-
-<p>I have not used it myself, as I am not involved in time table
-planning at a school, but it seem to work fine when I test it. If you
-need to set up your schools time table, and is tired of doing it
-manually, check it out.
-
-A quick summary on how to use it can be found in
-<a href="http://marvelsoft.co.in/wp/2012/03/generate-timetable-for-state-cbse-icse-igcse-schools-free/">a
-blog post from MarvelSoft</a>. If you find FET useful, please provide
-a recipe for the Debian Edu project in the
-<a href="http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu#Howtos">Debian Edu HowTo
-section</a>.</p>
+ <title>ColonHelp produser sue WordPress to silence critic</title>
+ <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/ColonHelp_produser_sue_WordPress_to_silence_critic.html</link>
+ <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/ColonHelp_produser_sue_WordPress_to_silence_critic.html</guid>
+ <pubDate>Fri, 12 Oct 2012 23:50:00 +0200</pubDate>
+ <description><p>Thanks to a blog post by
+<a href="http://ramblingfoo.blogspot.no/2012/10/a-shitstorm-is-comming.html">Eddy
+Petrișor</a>, I became aware of yet another "alternative medicine"
+company using legal intimidation tactics to scare off critics.
+According to the originating blog post about the detox "cure"
+<a href="http://insulaindoielii.wordpress.com/2012/10/11/colon-help-sues-wordpress/">ColonHelp
+and its producers Zenyth Pharmaceuticals actions</a>, the producer
+sues Wordpress to get rid of the critical information. To check if
+the story was for real, I contacted Automattic, the company behind
+wordpress.com, and they reply was "We can confirm that Zenyth is
+seeking a court order against WordPress / Automattic. However, we
+don't believe the Terms of Service have been violated in this
+matter".</p>
+
+<p>The story seem to be simply that a blogger checked the scientific
+foundation for a popular health product in Rumania, ColonHelp, and
+reported that there was no reason at all to believe it improved the
+health of its users. This caused the company behind the product,
+Zenyth Pharmaceuticals, to use legal intimidation to try to silence
+the critic, instead of presenting its views and scientific foundation
+to argue its side.</p>
+
+<p>This is the usual story, and the Zenyth Pharmaceuticals company
+deserve everyone to know how it failed to act properly. Lets hope the
+<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Streisand_effect">Streisand
+effect</a> can make it rethink its strategy.</p>
+
+<p>What is the harm, you might think. I suggest you take a look at
+<a href="http://www.whatstheharm.net/detoxification.html">a list of
+victims of detoxification</a>.</p>